The city of Detroit was home to one of the largest waste incinerators in the world for 34 years, until it closed in 2019. While in operation it was considered one of the largest sources of pollution in the city, and it has been connected to disproportionately high levels of respiratory issues and contributed to Detroit's high levels of asthma, hospitalization and even death. When the facility closed, the issue of what to do with Detroit’s waste did not disappear. 

Today the city of Detroit spends over $40 million a year on single-family residential waste management and has no municipal program for food waste or composting, according to Mateo Garcia (MS ’26), one of four master’s students at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) who worked to address waste management in Detroit. “By weight, Detroit’s waste is the largest waste stream in Michigan, and almost entirely ends up in landfills,” says Garcia.

Through their capstone project, Garcia, Natalie Nieman (MS ’26), Mollie Stadlin (MS ’26) and Bionca Stewart (MS ’26) worked to engage community members, urban farmers and community organizations in composting education. Advised by SEAS Lecturer shakara tyler, they partnered with a coalition of Detroit urban agriculture and food sovereignty organizations, including Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network (DBCFSN), Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund, Detroit Food Policy Council, Full Circle Future, Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, Sacred Spaces and Sanctuary Farms. 

Their capstone, the Detroit Community Compost Collective Program (DCCCP), was funded by a community grant to test composting initiatives across Detroit at three levels: backyard, community and urban farm. During Fall 2025, the DCCCP worked with 76 backyard compost systems, 32 community compost locations and six urban farms in Detroit. The students were involved with onboarding participants and participating farms to the program. This onboarding included teaching farmers how to measure their compost and sharing best composting practices. 

Garcia says this approach gave a sense of agency, and a right to the city, back to Detroit residents. “A multi-tiered compost system where people can engage directly with their community organizations for themselves to create this ‘black gold,’ this remedial substance, that can eliminate contamination and improve food security is very powerful,” Garcia says. “The rebirth of Detroit is not from people coming in. It is from Detroiters actually coming back and engaging with the city and taking claim over its vitalities.”

Once DCCCP concluded, the team focused on analyzing participant surveys and compost data. The team estimates that the DCCCP was able to divert around 5,000 pounds of food waste. 

While the team notes this is a small portion of Detroit’s total food waste, the preliminary findings from the program have been encouraging. The team was able to collect participatory data about the program. They found that residents were largely able to compost successfully, with few reports of odor issues, which is often a concern about composting systems. In the team’s laboratory testing, the compost from participants and urban farms came back healthy. According to team members, this offers early proof that urban farms can safely and effectively process municipal food waste. “There’s a big interest in composting in the city,” says Nieman, “and people do show up for things.”

Over the course of the project, the students have learned how Detroit's community organizations operate. For Nieman, seeing how their clients worked together to manage the rollout of a large project was insightful. “I learned how interconnected all of Detroit’s community organizations are and how they wear multiple hats,” says Nieman. 

Working with a coalition of nonprofits was an opportunity for the team to learn how the nonprofit space functions. Garcia reflects on overseeing an ambitious collaboration. “I definitely have grown in terms of my grant management skills, and learned what it takes to build and manage a team of individuals to meet a project.”

Beyond the pilot program, the team worked to support future composting efforts. Stewart analyzed composting policies across the state of Michigan and country to understand what programs exist and make recommendations. Garcia led efforts to produce an economic analysis for the potential of composting within the city, as well as a landscape analysis. Nieman and Stadlin completed a three-tiered curriculum review that assessed existing composting education programs across Michigan and the program. Their analysis will help create a vision for what community composting education could look like across the state. 

The team’s advisor, shakara tyler, who is the co-executive Director of DBCFSN, underscores the importance of the project. “We’re so thankful to be engaged in this project because composting is a critical component of building toward food sovereignty as we remake our relationships to waste and cultivate the closed-loop food economies. Waste is a lie, and everything has purpose in a circular ecosystem rooted in sustainability, justice and community,” tyler says. 

The team hopes their capstone efforts have contributed to creating a more just future related to waste management in Detroit.